Posts by Peter Darlington
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1. The budgeted $1.5 billion is nothing like enough to pay the taxpayer's half of a high-speed fibre network reaching 75% of New Zealanders. The total cost is more like between $5bn and $10bn.
2. No 1 is especially true if you actually want "ultra-fast" broadband in the form of an active, rather than a passive fibre network.
The word I heard on this was that the Govt got treasury to cost out the rollout. Firstly they went to Telco representatives for consultation and got a price of $6+bn back. The Govt didn't like this number so started speaking to other parties such as lines companies and others who have been involved in local fibre initiatives, and the number dropped to around $2+bn. This was obviously closer to what they wanted to hear and this is why the BII initiative is focused around the 25 local area initiatives rather than a single nationally-based (i.e. more traditional telco) model.
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Well they'd still be a really muscled up Vodafone/ihug wouldn't they?
True, they will have a strength in mobile networks as well when they role the 3g stuff out in May.
As an aside, who's to say we won't be having the same conversation with regards to open access cellular in the future just as we are now with fibre. It makes just as much sense to strip out the layer 2 there as it does over fibre. C'mon Russell (Stanners) and Paul, open up them networks!
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Telecom seems to have decided that co-operation is the better part of valour in hitching itself to the government's grand fibre plan -- and, in the process, putting some meat on the bones of the idea.
Chorus would make a fine Fibre Co, provided Telecom was structurally separated and that the Govt or a body with a mandate to enforce the open access principles was given a majority on the board.
Telecom haven't ruled out structural separation but make note of needing to be fair to their shareholders and this must surely be the clincher because if Telecom lost control of Chorus their share price would tank, I mean what's left? Xtra?
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The more cricket savvy Dropkicks last night selected Chris Gayle for cricket.
And Stephen Gerrard or Fernando Torres for football
So I'm a football and cricket savvy Dropkick? Cool.
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Rugby: Juan Hernandez, we're short of first fives
Football: Torres or Messi, goal machines
Cricket: Chris Gayle, he's a winner and he's a funky mofo
NRL: Brett Stewart, bad habits'n'all
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Football: Peter Crouch. [And I'm a ManU fan]
This is all screwy, on both counts.
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What we need to be careful of is the power we give to others.
Why were the Police in charge?
Why was there no co-ordination? Why were the assumptions that the crowd were invading the pitch rather than trying to live?It was Thatcher's England, football fans were not liked by her government despite their toadying up to an increasingly conservative working/lower middle class in the southern part of the country.
Add to this that the far north east and north west, especially Liverpool with a left wing city council was seen as the enemy within by her and her business & media toadies such as The Sun and you have the perfect climate for the almost sub-human treatment of LFCs fans on that day. Kelvin MacKenzie was the Sun editor who authorised the "The Truth" editorial and even his own staff were appalled by it. Amazingly the man still works in the media and is still insulting the Hillsborough victims and Liverpool fans even as recently as the last couple of years.
The grounds were prehistoric death traps and the fans were the enemy. The father in the documentary Richard mentions above talked about shouting at a policeman from the side pen that his 2 daughters were trapped in the crushing centre pen and he was told to "shut his trap and stop causing trouble", that was the attitude on the day and it's easy to see why nothing was done until it was far too late.It wasn't all rosy here though, the most frightening crowd crush I've been in was at a Ranfurly Shield match at Lancaster Park in 1985. Lancaster Park was a grovel of a ground back then, the terraces moved as thousands of fans jumped up and down and pushed and jostled, the steps were just 2x4 framing, it was the pits. On this day the terraces were packed, I couldn't move and the surges were sweeping us off our feet completely out of control. I fought my way to the side at half time and hung onto a barrier. It was terrifying, and I can't begin to imagine what those people at Hillsborough went through in that centre pen on that day.
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It appears I mistook "tongue in cheek" for "dick".
Ooh er Missus!
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Also, from that Guardian article, Steven Gerrard's 10 year old cousin died at Hillsborough. Gerrard was 8 years old.
And the current Lord Mayor of Liverpool should have been in the Leppings Lane End but swapped his ticket for a stand seat.
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From that same Guardian article;
Without a conviction, or at least admission of liability, there could be no closure for the likes of John Glover, who lost his 20-year-old son Ian. He also considered his two other boys to be victims of Hillsborough. After the disaster, both were so traumatised that they were told they were unlikely ever to be able to work again. Joseph Glover, then 22, tried to resuscitate Ian with the kiss of life. For years, he slept on his brother's gravestone. He felt it was wrong that he'd survived and Ian hadn't. Ten years ago, he returned to work. On his first day back, he was crushed to death unloading a wagon. It was beyond irony. No wonder John Glover thought his family was cursed.
Unbelievable.
We were at Anfield last May and checked out the Justice shop, it's really really sad and my kids struggled to understand what it was all about.
Also, a few of the Hammers fans have give some great descriptions of the 1988 FA Cup tie at QPR which thankfully wasn't a fenced ground. I don't think Steve would mind me posting this here;
I was also at Loftus Road for that cup tie, and I'm
convinced I would have died if there had been fences. I was told that
QPR sold 21,000 tickets to West Ham fans. My ticket was for a seat
down the side of the ground (because I thought standing that day would
be crazy), but when I got to the ground at 2pm the police said that
stand was already full and I had to go and stand behind the goal. West
Ham fans occupied the majority of three sides of the ground, I've
never seen anything like it. The line to get in was insane, with no
help from the police, who just stood around making unhelpful snarky
comments, and when I finally made it into the ground (at about 3.05,
after kick-off), there were about a bazillion fans crammed into every
centimeter of the stand. It was truly horrible. As the crush got worse
and worse, people began spilling onto the plastic pitch. Thankfully.
After which a policeman on a horse came over and tried to push us
back, while his horse took a dump. Never was the chant "Shitty pitch,
shitty pitch, shitty pitch" louder or more apt.Fences, poor ground management, and treating people like dirt. It's a perfect cocktail for a severe f**k up at some point.